Pre-Kitchen Madness Vacation - Seattle and Whistler

When my Uncle Kyle told us he would be competing in Ironman Canada in Whistler this year, Andrew and I decided immediately that we wanted to take the trip to watch. My Uncle just moved into a beautiful new house with his wife, Neda, so we convinced my parents and sister to come along for the trip. Going through my pictures on the plane home from Seattle, I am so happy it turned out to be such an awesome vacation. 

We got in late Thursday night, I was all wound up from work and traveling (poor Andrew), and the whole house was fast asleep. Since we were on east coast time, it was early to bed and then very early to rise. We were all up by 6:00am so I took advantage of it and went for a long run around the lake right across the street from Kyle and Neda's house.

View from my run 

We had no plans for Friday and decided that we would spend the morning at the Museum of Flight. Honestly, I wasn't too excited about it but it ended up being a really great decision. Everyone enjoyed the museum, especially my Dad and Andrew.

The museum was more interesting than I thought it would be - we spent over three hours learning about the history of flight and touring the planes. Andrew was in his glory when he had an opportunity to sit in some of the old fighter planes, making me realize how important it will be to him to get his pilot license one day.

Happy boy

After the museum we headed to Pike Place market to grab lunch and be typical tourists. It was uncomfortably packed so we quickly grabbed fresh veggies for dinner and headed home to meet up with an old high school friend for drinks and eat an amazing homemade dinner.

We spent Friday night prepping to leave for Whistler early Saturday morning. Neda had t-shirts made for our cheer squad so we got crafty making the large men’s shirts a little sexier and picked out a few Burningman costumes to bring with us.

Andrew being sexy

Fun Burningman costumes

On Saturday morning we were out the door by 8:30 am to head to Whistler, a four and a half drive from Seattle. Since Vancouver is about halfway between Seattle and Whistler, we had planned to stop there for lunch with a restaurant recommendation from an Accenture colleague. We did not anticipate the hour long wait at the Canada border so we amused ourselves with music and taking pictures.

Crossing the border into Canada, we lost cell phone service and contact between the two cars we took up. We were surprisingly successful at following each other into Vancouver but ended up in a very cracked out neighborhood for lunch. We had made a right instead of a left to find our lunch recommendation and the half mile difference between where we ended up and where we were supposed to be was more impressive than the difference between Philly neighborhoods. Luckily, we found our restaurant and had a really excellent lunch.

Lunch in Vancouver

Our time in Vancouver was very limited so I can’t give it a full review, but it was just ok from what we experienced. Lots of homeless people but up and coming, with cool pockets of neighborhoods. I won’t hate on it too much since it reminded me of a mountainous Philadelphia. The views from Vancouver to Whistler were beyond beautiful. Unfortunately, pictures from the car can't even begin to do the scenery justice.

Whistler is the first real mountain resort town I have ever been to and we were all very impressed. The whole area was clean and beautiful, promoting an active lifestyle. During the summer, the ski slopes are turned into mountain bike trails so Andrew was in his element. 

We were all pumped up to be in Whistler and there for the race, so after dinner we studied the course map to figure out the best places to watch while Kyle raced for approximately 11 hours.

Race morning we were up at 6:00am to meet up with Neda and head over to the swim start. Kyle recommended that we take bikes with us to Whistler, the best idea of the trip. Our little bike gang rode over to the swim together as we walked past hundreds of people walking the 2 miles to the lake. We got there in plenty of time and the scenery could not have been more beautiful. It was a brisk morning and we were all very happy not to be getting ready to swim the 2.4 miles in the steamy lake.

After watching the mass swim start, we were off to see Kyle on the bike. The first opportunity to see him was about 8km into the race so we rode our little bike gang through the mountains to scout out our location. We didn’t manage to get any pictures of Kyle on the bike, but our little cheering squad was quite the entertainment as we made up cheers to support the bikers.

We had three hours to burn between the first triathlete sighting and the next, so we decided to head out on our bikes about 5 miles to the secluded Green Lake to continue our cheering. The lake was beautiful so we made the best of our time by swimming in the glacier-fed water.

Swimming in the freezing water (below 60 degrees) was one of the highlights of the day and got us motivated to continue cheering. We kept ourselves entertained by dancing to music and learning new tricks on the bike.

 
The three hours went quickly so after seeing Kyle crushing it on his final few miles on the bike, we headed back into Whistler to do our final cheering for the runners.  At this point it was 2:00pm and hot and the runners were looking tired after the 112 miles on the bike. We saw Kyle at about mile 4 and he was looking very strong and in good spirits.

After seeing him, we decided to take a food break and make our final cheering location on the bleachers at the finish line. By the time we reached the finish line, we had had enough sun, so we couldn't imagine how the triathletes were feeling. It is always so inspiring watching the athletes cross the finish line after a full day of intense racing. You can watch as their spirits are lifted by the crowd cheering them on at the final stretch, so we cheered and danced our hardest of the day.

We were expecting Kyle to finish any time between 10 hours and 45 minutes and 11 hours and 15 minutes but we were totally caught off guard by him running past us at 10:47. He had an amazing day of racing and we were all so excited to be there to support him.

After the race we were exhausted and hungry (cheering is hard work) so we did a lot of relaxing and eating. We headed back to Seattle on Monday morning exhausted but happy after a really great time in Whistler. We made the most of our Ironman spectating and were excited to get home to eat an Iranian meal by Neda’s parents.

On Tuesday morning I woke up for a final run around Green Lake before Andrew and I headed to the airport – Andrew to Philly and me to Charlotte for my final few days with my team. The next few weeks will be crazy busy, as I start a new project right outside of NYC and our kitchen demo begins! Thanks Seattle for an awesome summer trip, we will be back again soon!